Who Are We?

The Owners & The History

www.secludedbalivillas.com was founded by us, Rene and Tom Springall at the beginning of 2013. As itinerant expats, we had nowhere that we called home, but we both loved Bali and after several trips here over the years in 2005 we decided to buy our own villa here, just after we had with our first daughter, and so we decided to name the villa after our daughter (Villa Talia Vashti).
Initially we just used our villa only for family and friends, but we invested a lot of time training the staff to provide our expected high level of service (Rene has a degree in hotel management, and had worked at some of the top hotels in Asia) and also to make the villa totally suitable for us as a family, but also for us to be able to enjoy with friends as well.
In 2006 we decided tentatively to offer our wonderful villa to others to rent, and were amazed at the response – loads of people came and stayed and everyone absolutely loved the villa – it was a total revelation to us.
The following year we were blessed with a second daughter, who we named Kalisha. We realised we were in trouble now though as she was bound to be jealous that her sister had a villa and she did not. Rene had always loved the cool of the mountains, and we were lucky enough to find an amazing villa near Ubud, which we had to totally renovate which we named after our second daughter (Villa Kalisha).
Since then we have bought two more villas, and although we stay often at the villas, increasingly they were booked, and so we stayed at other villas. Almost always though other villas were not like ours at all – even if they seemed to be in the advertising. Breakfasts were often disappointing – just bit of cheap toast and local jam with some instant coffee and UHT milk. Staff basically cleaned the villas, but did little else, and most of all almost no provision was made for families at the villas and there was rarely any of the personal service and help in arranging trips and activities that we experienced at our own villas.

Secludedbalivillas.com

Over the years our four little villas ran consistently at over 70% occupancy, and we received great feedback and reviews from almost all our guests, and so increasingly friends who owned villas in Bali started asking us to help them to do the same.
In 2011 Tom was lucky enough to be made redundant from the corporate world, and so we decided that rather than go back into the daily grind of company life, we would instead take all of the collective knowledge and skills that we had learnt over the years with our own villas to set up secludedbalivillas.com and our sister website kidfriendlyvillas.com – so here we are!
We now manage and advertise 7 great villas in Bali. Both Rene and I are still involved every day, and personally visit and inspect all the villas listed on secludedbalivillas.com every 6 to 8 weeks. Our intention though is always to remain a small personal company though with a limited number of villas, as we want to retain the personal connection to all the villas we have listed on secludedbalivillas.com. We have no desire to become like the many other sites that list hundreds of villas that they never visited, and then employ lots of local staff to answer your queries who have often never even stayed in a villa.

Our secludedbalivillas.com Team

With seven villas, we realised that we needed to take on more staff/friends to help us, and so we are now lucky enough to have Shannim working with us to help manage enquiries, Haryo helps us sort out all the local logistics and operations and Jess and Hely help us to make sure that all the boring stuff that we have invested in behind the scenes works well and efficiently (availability calendars, reservation systems etc.).
For more about our team and secludedbalivillas please check out our video

Our Villa Staff

Every one of our villas is fully staffed, and of course our villa staff are the most important people that work with us, as they are the ones that you will see and get to know when you stay at our villas.
We work hard with all our villa staff to make sure that the service you get at our villas is as best as it can be. We have been very lucky that almost all of our original staff are still with us since they first joined us, which is great for us, and for guests who come back and stay with us as you are able to see again the same smiling faces that were there when you first stayed with us.